Russian Prime Minister’s Twitter account hacked

Russia is known for keeping away from the public eye, President Vladimir Putin does not use social media and rarely does interviews with any media agency outside of Russia, but the same cannot be said for Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

The Prime Minister has an official Twitter account with 2.5 million followers, and around noon Eastern Time a tweet went up saying ” I am resigning. Ashamed of the actions of the government. I’m sorry.”

This was followed by a lot of anti-Putin and anti-Russia tweets and retweets, leading people to believe the Prime Minister had been hacked. Turns out, it was a hacker, after forty minutes the Russian regained control of the Twitter account.

No word on who the hacker’s name or if Russian officials have found any information. Whoever it was does not like the current government and looks towards activist Alexei Navalny, who is one of Putin’s greatest rivals.

It might be another hacker/troll who appears to be fighting a cause by hacking, but might just be looking to cause mayhem. The Russian officials are bound to make sure security is tighter on the Prime Minister’s account, after the hack.

This does mean it was likely Dmitry Medvedev did not have two step verification on his Twitter account, something all accounts should use. This two step verification stops hackers from simply cracking the password to log in.

Twitter has been installing new ways to keep accounts safe, after the Syrian Electronic Army and other hacking groups started picking off high-profile Twitter handles, to post propaganda on Syria and other countries involved.

It does seem like Russian authorities have the issue under control and the effects of the hack do not seem to be widespread, but it will probably make Russian security even tighter on Twitter.